Lack of character development in movies

AlanS2323 said:

I saw the movies "Frailty" and "The Talented Mr. Ripley" recently and loved both. However, I couldn't help but think about how little character development both of them had.

For example, in Frailty there was basically no character development. All we know about the father is that he's apparently a mechanic and his wife died. All we know about the kids is that they have a nice father, their mom died, and then their father goes crazy. Aside from those few details, we know absolutely nothing about the characters. They're total strangers who have been thrown into an interesting situation.

Same for the Talented Mr. Ripley. We know nothing about Matt Damon's character. We know he's impersonating someone who went to Princeton, is gay, and is in love with Jude Law. His challenge is to keep up the charade and not get caught. But where is the depth there? We know hardly anything about his background. Again, he's like a total stranger who has been thrown into an interesting situation.

So am I misunderstanding something about character development here? Because from watching these movies, it seems okay to throw someone into an interesting situation, even when the audience knows near nothing about his background.

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I don't think background is anywhere near as important to the audience as what happens to the character in the actual movie. The last thing you want is for a reader to go "hmm, this flashback is more interesting than anything else that's happening".

But background information is very valuable to the writer. It can influence everything from how a character speaks to their values. I don't go into pages and pages for my characters, I just make a short psychological profile; what's their problem, how it affects them, and whether or not it changes.

You might want to check out Mystery Man of Film, he talks a lot about character on his blog.

AlanS2323 said:

*subject is supposed to be "lack of character development IN movies" but it won't let me edit.

I saw the movies "Frailty" and "The Talented Mr. Ripley" recently and loved both. However, I couldn't help but think about how little character development both of them had.

For example, in Frailty there was basically no character development. All we know about the father is that he's apparently a mechanic and his wife died. All we know about the kids is that they have a nice father, their mom died, and then their father goes crazy. Aside from those few details, we know absolutely nothing about the characters. They're total strangers who have been thrown into an interesting situation.

Same for the Talented Mr. Ripley. We know nothing about Matt Damon's character. We know he's impersonating someone who went to Princeton, is gay, and is in love with Jude Law. His challenge is to keep up the charade and not get caught. But where is the depth there? We know hardly anything about his background. Again, he's like a total stranger who has been thrown into an interesting situation.

So am I misunderstanding something about character development here? Because from watching these movies, it seems okay to throw someone into an interesting situation, even when the audience knows near nothing about his background.

Click to expand...

In Ripley we discover a lot about Tom: we discover he's bisexual or latently gay, we discover he's probably been forging and lying all of his life, that he is from a poor background, probably orphaned, that he is prepared to better himself and work as a bathroom attendant, that he has a photographic memory, that he doesn't tan easily; that he can sing, that he is extremely resourceful and quick-thinking, that he has no problem killing but that he does so in a cold automaton state, that he is a control freak and when his plans are changed for him he will kill, that he knows how to dress, how to learn languages, how to impersonate and, most of all, how to live with himself;

All in all, I'd say we know a lot about him. I'd say this was superb character development. As far as backstory goes, the writer knows it, but he doesn't need to release it to us in an expositional nightmare because it is interwoven, skillfully, into the action on screen.

character development

Character development, or character arc? There's a difference.

As I see it, character development is the work the author does behind the scenes: backstory, finding the 'voice', defining the character's personal preferences.

Character arc is how the character changes during the course of the play, movie, or novel. It's what happens out where the audience can see it.

In 'Ripley' - at least the book; I've never been able to sit through the movie - the character-arc point about Tom would seem to be that he doesn't change in any fundamental way. His changes are all superficial, to meet the changing demands of the situations he's in, but at his core, he is still the amoral black hole of need/greed that drives his chameleon-like surface appearance. His character arc is rather passive, as villains' often are.

The other characters change in fundamental ways of thinking and viewing the world. They have change forced upon them by his actions and the consequences of those actions. Their character arcs are more visible, more active. They may have started the story less 'developed' on the surface, but they're the characters we know better at the end.

my pre-coffee thoughts...

Jana

Did you watch the DVD extras on Frailty? The film might not have shared inane details about the characters lives, but their interpersonal connections are also important for their development and arc. The first scene shows the brothers as good friends, as the movie progresses Fenton feels left out when his brother identifies more with Dad than with him and let's not spoil the end. It's a clear arc and when you dive into it, you can see all sorts of fascinating details about how the characters think and change their thinking. Also, their religious conviction is in there somewhere.

AlanS2323 said:

*subject is supposed to be "lack of character development IN movies" but it won't let me edit.

I saw the movies "Frailty" and "The Talented Mr. Ripley" recently and loved both. However, I couldn't help but think about how little character development both of them had.

For example, in Frailty there was basically no character development. All we know about the father is that he's apparently a mechanic and his wife died. All we know about the kids is that they have a nice father, their mom died, and then their father goes crazy. Aside from those few details, we know absolutely nothing about the characters. They're total strangers who have been thrown into an interesting situation.

Same for the Talented Mr. Ripley. We know nothing about Matt Damon's character. We know he's impersonating someone who went to Princeton, is gay, and is in love with Jude Law. His challenge is to keep up the charade and not get caught. But where is the depth there? We know hardly anything about his background. Again, he's like a total stranger who has been thrown into an interesting situation.

So am I misunderstanding something about character development here? Because from watching these movies, it seems okay to throw someone into an interesting situation, even when the audience knows near nothing about his background.

Click to expand...

I'm not quite sure what you mean by character development, but if you mean giving the audience a lot of information about a character's past life and relationships -- often that's completely unnecessary.

That is, it may be necessary for you, the writer, to know these things (or it may not) -- but the audience doesn't need to know it.

Think about it this way. A real person, as a rule, lives for seventy or eighty years -- that's seventy or eighty years worth of comings and goings and accumulated experiences.

In a movie, a character exists -- really exists, for two hours. Generally less, because most characters aren't on screen every minute that the movie is running.

The number of minutes that that character appears on screen is the sum total of that character's life. He is born the first time he appears on screen and his existence ends (barring sequels) the last time he appears on screen.

Everything else, his past, his future, what he does off screen, has to be suggested or inferred.

That doesn't give much time to screw around. The first time a character appears -- that first scene -- certainly within a couple scenes -- you have to give the audience a clear sense of what kind of person he is. Nice guy, bad guy, decisive guy, indecisive guy, mean, smart, dumb.

The way you do this isn't by having some recitation of his past life, but by showing him in action, showing him making a decision, responding to some problem.

Doing something.

It's by seeing somebody *doing something* of significance right up front that his character is revealed.

And when we have given the audience a clear sense of what that person is like up front -- a sort of "working theory" of who that person is -- it is how that person deals with the challenges that the story presents -- does he change, does he refuse to change, does he win, does he lose -- that is what he generally consider to be "character development."

That is -- the character develops -- evolves, over the course of the story.

Whether we learn something about his past life or not depends on whether his past is relevant to the issue he's facing now -- in the present tense of the story.

For instance, we learn something about Clarice Starling's past, about the death of her father, about the incident with the sheep, because that incident from her past is relevant to what is happening in the present story.

In 12 Angry Men, we learn about Lee J. Cobb's past with his son -- because that is relevant to the present story. And we learn some things about some of the other juror's past lives.

But we learn nothing about Henry Fonda's past, even though he is the central character. That's because his past is not relevant to the story. It doesn't matter why he is doing what he is doing. Whatever his reasons may be for being the lone hold-out at the beginning -- they don't affect the story.

On the other hand it *does* matter to the story why Lee J. Cobb is the lone hold-out at the end, because he has to face that reason and ultimately change his mind.

That's why we have to find out, ultimately, what that reason is.

That's always the litmus test -- you only reveal as much about a character's past as the *story* requires.

NMS

It's just like meeting new people on the street or at work. Do they walk up to you and say, "Hi, my name is Bob, I got divorced ten years ago, when I was a little kid my parents got divorced as well and I think that set up the failure of my own marriage, but I've learned from that. I'm never getting married again. I'm afraid of spiders, deathly allergic to peanut butter, I like to jog, I love the color orange but absolutely hate green, so you won't find any green on me, or in my house. I don't have any friends (wonder why) I don't like to socialize though I'm partial to jello shots and reading books. I solve unsolvable math problems at night because they interest me and you sir, are below my level so I'm going to remain aloof to you for the rest of the time you are here. By the way, welcome to the office." Then walks away.

I would certainly hope not! There is a lot we don't know about people we are around every day in real life, and usually when we gain a window into the past it's usually during a difficult time (or drunken incident take your pick.)

How we get to know people is what they do every day. Their past helps make them who they are today, but it's their actions and reactions that define them.

The same goes for movies. You need to fully develop your offscreen character so they are believable and realistic in how they handle the situations you put them in. They also need to change, that is character growth. And we definitely don't need to be told all of the above, a lot of those things can be shown without him ever uttering a word about them, and only if they are important to making the character relatable and more tangible to the audience.

Nothing should make it into your story that isn't absolutely necessary and serves some sort of purpose. The rest is on the chopping block.

In the script i'm working on at the moment i'm making use of flashbacks, to let the audience see my characters past and how it has affected his present.
I think it is important to show how your characters past has influenced his present, how past events have effected him. For example; in the script i am working on atm, my character was abandoned at birth, given up for adoption. This gives my character low confidence, makes him feel as though nobody wants him etc. Think you get the idea.

C.P. McGurn said:

In the script i'm working on at the moment i'm making use of flashbacks, to let the audience see my characters past and how it has affected his present.
I think it is important to show how your characters past has influenced his present, how past events have effected him. For example; in the script i am working on atm, my character was abandoned at birth, given up for adoption. This gives my character low confidence, makes him feel as though nobody wants him etc. Think you get the idea.

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There's only one reason to show or to reveal a past problem -- and that is if you intend to solve that past problem in the present day of the story.

Because then, really, it isn't a "past problem" -- in effect, even though you're advancing it in the form of a flashback, it really isn't. You're simply presenting the story a bit out of sequence.

In essence, the story begins when the problem begins -- back in the past, and ends when the problem is resolved.

Sometimes, in something like Terminator, the problem really begins in the future (which is shown as a "flashback") and gets resolved in the past -- which, of course, is our present).

But it amounts to the same thing. The only justification for showing it -- that is, the flashback, is because you're showing something in one time that's ultimately going to get resolved in another time.

What you don't ever want to do (and a lot of beginning writers do this) is to use a flashback solely for exposition -- to simply give audiences information -- whether it's information about a character or about the world or about anything else.

That's because when you are using a flashback in this way, the story taking place in the present has come to grinding halt.

And you never want to have a scene in which the story stops dead, the scene plays, and then the story starts up again after the scene plays out.

Expository or "informational" scenes are scenes like that.

Every story is, on some level, about a problem that a protagonist has to solve. That problem has an external dilemma -- a giant monster is attacking Tokyo -- and an internal dilemma -- how can I reveal this deadly monster-destroying weapon I've discovered without it ultimately being used for evil?

And the two -- external and internal -- move toward a single united resolution.

What you don't want to do is to frame a dilemma in terms that cannot really be resolved.

Obviously, lots of people are abandoned and put up for adoption and don't have low self-esteem.

And in any case that situation -- the fact of his abandonment and adoption -- isn't one that he can change.

The question really is -- what is your story about? Is the story about someone trying to overcome his own feelings of low self-esteem and searching for its source in his own past - or is it about something else, and his low self-esteem simply an aspect of his character that isn't really going to be centrally addressed?

If it's the latter, then does it really make any difference what the source of his low self-esteem is? Does it move the story forward for us to know?

NMS

C.P. McGurn said:

In the script i'm working on at the moment i'm making use of flashbacks, to let the audience see my characters past and how it has affected his present.
I think it is important to show how your characters past has influenced his present, how past events have effected him. For example; in the script i am working on atm, my character was abandoned at birth, given up for adoption. This gives my character low confidence, makes him feel as though nobody wants him etc. Think you get the idea.

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This can really be hinted at and doesn't need to be shown in flashbacks because flashbacks are generally exposition and really don't belong in a script.

I'll use fingerprints as an example. It had like five flashbacks to her and her boyfriend's overdose and ultimately his death and her near death, but really didn't help the story by being there and brought it down a notch. If it had been left as backstory, as that's what it was and had absolutely no bearing on the story itself, then the movie would have been that much stronger IMO.

As others have noted, background and character development are different things.

AlanS2323 said:

Yes, but does any of that actually make you care about him? In other words, are any of the things we know about him of any real consequence? What sort of emotional investment do you have in him? All that stuff seems like superficial idiosyncratic details. What makes you care about whether he gets away with murder or goes to prison forever?

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*spoilers obviously*
I haven't seen the movie in a while, but my recollection is that you sympathize with Tom because you see he just wants to be accepted. He wants to be Jude Law's character -- free, easy, accepted -- but Jude Law never truly accepts him, never truly thinks of him as equal, and that hurts Tom. Similarly, Phillip Seymour Hoffman's character never accepts him. Tom just wants to be legit.

And you sympathize with him, the poor kid who wants to be accepted and they won't accept him. And then he lashes out, and you feel bad for him because you know he doesn't want to. You want him to stop lashing out, and he wants to but he can't. Because of the character development, you really want him to succeed. You want the aristocrats to see how clever he is, to see him as one of them, for him to stop lying and be at peace. All of those things come out of character development. You see his hang ups, his vulnerability. You're aware of what he wants.

In that last scene, you know what Ripley is going to do, that's because of the character development -- you understand him to a point. If you can predict, or at least understand a character's actions, then they are well developed. Also, in the end, you wish dearly that he won't do it, and you care because of the character development.

The actual instances of this character development are subtle, and are in everything he does and says. And I haven't seen the movie recently enough to trace it to each line, but I'm pretty sure it's easy to trace in his words and actions.